


Rock Bottom

by Mustachioedmoose



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Drama & Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mustachioedmoose/pseuds/Mustachioedmoose
Summary: Leon Kennedy has been called more times than he can count to save the world. Truth be told, he prefers to be alone. Considering his line of work, it's just easier that way. But then Angela Ivers, a previously forgotten bright spot, came back into his life and flipped his world view upside down. But nothing in Leon's life is easy or goes smoothly, now, does it?





	1. Love Found

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, thanks for reading. It's about 100 years since I posted anything online (mostly I shove my nonsense directly at fandom friends) so this has me a little bit nervous. Ah well, here we go! Enjoy!

Truth be told, Leon preferred to be alone.

  
Or rather, he did most of the time.

  
But lately, he’d been in the company of what you could have called an old friend.

  
At first, he’d resisted the desire to be around Angela Ivers. He’d realized a long time ago that keeping his distance from people was for the best; it made it easier if something happened to him or them. But after they’d run into each other in the hallway at the DSO office six months ago – “…Angie?” he’d called after her retreating form, not believing that it could really be her – he’d been undeniably drawn to her presence. Though she was nothing but serious at work, she’d always had a way about her, a certain kind of mischievous energy that he couldn’t totally put his finger on. Whatever it was, he was drawn to her. Whether it was because she was a pleasant part of his past, or because her liveliness made him feel significantly less bitter, he didn’t know, nor did he really care. The less he thought about it, he figured, the more he’d be able to enjoy it.

  
He was currently wearing nothing but boxers as he lay on her squashy white pouf of a couch in her midtown D.C. condo, listening to her hum lullabies to herself from the next room as she made them some late-night eggs. They both by some miracle had the next day off, so he’d brought over a bottle of wine and they’d had quite the evening. She was very adventurous in bed. Nearly six hours of lovemaking later, he lay in the comforting darkness of the living room, looking back on memories he had of her as his eyes wandered over the immaculately white bookcases full of a curiously jumbled mess of curios and collectables (and no books – those she kept in her bedroom).

  
She’d been levels ahead of him when the government had first recruited him for training after Raccoon City, but even then, she’d turned his head (he’d always had kind of a thing for redheads). There was a strict, zero tolerance policy against relations amongst recruits, however. And, let’s face it, she was way out of his league anyway, so he’d never bothered with anything more than fantasy in his head. She hadn’t seemed to notice him much either until he was assigned, for a brief stint of about a year, to be her trainee.  
He’d had some close combat training at the police academy, but nothing like what they – the mysterious “they” – wanted him to know. Angela, on the other hand, was apparently some sort of knife combat prodigy; in fact, the higher-ups had often employed her to burst the bubbles of young recruits that thought they were hot shit. Even he had to admit, it had been a lot of fun to see the smugness drain from those assholes’ faces when Angela laid them out on their backs in thirty seconds or less. She’d told him then with a jokingly snide smile that they - whoever they were – had seen something in him.

  
She’d been very patient with him at first in modeling stances and explaining techniques, but as soon as she’d decided that he was ready to spar, she’d kicked his ass. Repeatedly and mercilessly. He groaned softly to himself as he recalled the countless bruises and cuts, even a cracked rib, from those sparring sessions. Over the year or so that she was in charge of this portion of his training, he’d steadily gotten better and a grin began to spread over her face every time they sparred. She enjoyed the challenge, as it were. By the time she’d graduated, he was able to hold his own against her for a solid seven minutes before she managed to find an opening and kicked his feet out from under him. He remembered very clearly the pride in her eyes as she helped him back up. And, even more clearly, he remembered the feeling of satisfaction seeing the sweat beading on her forehead. He’d never been able to make her sweat before.

  
“And now I get a chance to pay her back,” he thought smugly as a smirk spread across his lips, throwing an arm over his eyes. He certainly was making her sweat now.

  
“What are you grinning at?”

  
Leon took the arm off his face to see that Angela was standing over him, two plates of eggs in her hands and her own smirk on her lips. She was wearing nothing but his work shirt, and, he noted with pleasure, she had left it unbuttoned. That smirk softened into a warm smile as she jerked her head towards her over-large kitchen table. Leon grinned back; her fastidiousness had not changed since training. He would’ve happily eaten on the couch, but Angela would have none of that. She paused for a moment to turn on the TV as he stood up; 16 and Pregnant was marathoning on MTV, she said. He couldn’t help but laugh. Though she was over forty, she was a self-proclaimed trash TV junkie, which clashed heavily with the prim and proper image she projected all day long at the DSO.

  
He followed her lazily across the hardwood floor. While she fixated her eyes on the screen from her kitchen table, he tuned out the chatter from the TV to watch her out of the corner of his eye as she ate. She certainly wasn’t the same Angela he had known back then. Her voice, especially her laugh, was raspier now; she’d picked up a chain smoking habit for a while after her surgeries. She’d even picked up a heroin habit briefly to deal with the trauma of the “incident,” as it was called by those that knew, before the training center got a hold of her again and forced her into rehab – faded track marks dotted her forearms. She wore glasses now, too. The trauma to her head from the explosion had left her blind for several weeks, and her vision had never been quite the same after that. But she had aged very well – aside from a crease or two between her eyebrows and some faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, she looked much the same as she did sixteen years ago.

  
But he thought she was even more stunning now than she was then. She had been through a lot and had conquered it all, with wisdom and a sharp tongue to show for it. The Angela he had known in training was rigid, anxious and unforgiving; the Angela he had found at the DSO was quieter, more thoughtful, and had a great deal more understanding. She smiled more, and not that snide smirk that had often adorned her face in those days. A real, genuine smile.

  
He had told her about his growing up, despite his reservations about telling anyone about who he really was: about his father leaving his mother when his youngest sister was born with Down syndrome; about his father losing his temper and he, Leon, having to bear the brunt of the beatings in order to keep his sisters from harm; about loving dancing as a teenager and being called a sissy or worse by his increasingly absent father; about joining the police academy to impress him. She had listened, squeezing his hand or stroking his hair at the appropriate moments. He’d had a nightmare that night and had felt incredibly vulnerable when he’d woken up. But still, he wasn’t sure what had possessed him to bare his soul to her, but there was something so comforting about lying next to her in the dark that it just sort of spilled out of him.

  
She didn’t disappoint, either. Though it was another two months before they could both spend more than an hour or two together, she surprised him one morning with a reservation for a private ballroom dancing lesson that night, the voucher printed on crisp white paper with a heart drawn in the corner of the page. That night was the most fun he could remember having in quite some time. It was really nice to be able to see her let go outside of the confines of their homes, and to be able to let go a little bit himself. It was really nice to be able to see her (literally) let her hair down; in fact, thinking back on it, that was the first time he had ever seen her hair not in a tight bun. She was quite a good dancer herself and revealed with a blush on her cheeks that she’d trained in ballet until she’d joined the Marines. He hadn’t told her, but the gesture, the experience of dancing with her, of watching her lose herself in music and laughing with her, had only deepened his feelings.

  
He tried not to think about this much. In his experience, thinking about his feelings for the people he was with only seemed to end in disaster, when he realized they didn’t make him very happy. Then again, none of the people he’d been with since Raccoon City had understood. A few of them had been ex-wives of military men, or military men themselves, so he thought they would have been able to handle it. But all of them left in the end. He’d even taken a stab at it with Claire. But their experiences were too similar for it to work, and he was surprised they were still friends after all that fighting. But Angela….

  
She understood but didn’t know. She, too, woke up in cold sweats. She, too, had sleepless nights. She, too, found it difficult to leave the house some days. But while she had experienced her own debilitating traumas, she hadn’t watched entire cities fall to ruin because of men trying to play God, at least not first hand. In fact, he had told her his story after he’d woken from a nightmare when he’d stayed over one night, one in which a monstrous creature with his father’s face consumed entire cities’ worth of people. It had taken him a long time to realize where he was when he woke, he was so panicked, until her face swam into view. She’d held him closely to her under her down comforter and cooed sweet nothings into his ear as he furiously wiped tears away. She had listened without judgment and without rejection, and that was all he had ever wanted.  
He didn’t want to think about it. But he had realized, when she’d said it, that it was so easy to slip into survival mode. It was so easy. A crisis arose, and it was so easy. Coming down from that, coming back to a normal life, was nearly impossible sometimes. She understood. She’d said it herself: even though the “incident,” wherein nearly her entire team was slaughtered by a pack of B.O.Ws on her first mission out, was nearly 15 years ago, she still had days where she hovered in an uncomfortably gray area between fight and flight, where even just going to the grocery store seemed impossibly dangerous. When memories stole sleep from her, she mourned for the woman she had been before. They had both been different people, and had left those people behind in the flames.

  
He didn’t want to think about it. But he was almost certain he loved her. It was nothing less than an impossible task to draw him out of his un-crackable exterior. And she had done it. And for the first time, he wasn’t scared of it.

  
“Uh…Leon?”

  
Leon jerked out of his reverie to see that Angela was staring at him with her eyebrows furrowed over her glasses, looking like she was concerned he was going crazy.

  
“Your eyes glazed over for a minute, and you haven’t eaten anything. Are you okay?”

  
Ah, so that was it. He’d been told by others that if he was going through an “episode,” as he liked to call them, that he’d get a glassy look in his eyes, so he could see why she would be concerned. He gave her a flash of a toothy grin to placate her, taking her hand and squeezing it on the rough pine tabletop.

  
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he reassured her. “Just lost in thought, I guess.”

  
“Anything in particular?”

  
He chuckled to himself. She was a firm believer that talking out trauma was a key component in conquering it. He shook his head, adopting a thoughtful look, which just caused her eyes to narrow.

  
“No, not really,” he said, thinking it amusingly annoying that she didn’t believe him. “Just us,” he added, just to poke at her.

  
Her eyes narrowed even further. They’d been dancing around “the talk” for what had to be about a month now. It was one thing to do the whole friends with benefits thing – that was easy to keep quiet. But becoming boyfriend-girlfriend? That had different implications. Though there wasn’t any rule written out by the DSO saying that they couldn’t be, it was frowned upon, especially because she was Intel and he was head of Field. He knew what they would say: having that sort of attachment, especially to someone that worked in his own office, could cause the both of them to lose focus, and losing focus doing what they did could mean someone might lose their life. But did it matter? Could he look past this fact to take a shot at happiness and peace?

  
He couldn’t answer that now, as Angela was rolling her eyes and getting up out of her chair.

  
“Are you going to finish this?” she asked him brusquely, indicating his still-full plate. He nodded silently in response and dug in, surprised at the sudden change in mood. “Just put your plate in the sink when you’re done, then,” she added on before she put her own plate in the dishwasher, “I’m going to bed.”

  
Before she disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, she gave him a kiss, but it was missing the warmth he might have expected given the evening they’d had. Leon sighed before he began shoveling giant forkfuls of eggs into his mouth. He wasn’t entirely sure how welcome he was anymore, and instinct was telling him that leaving her be was for the best. When he was finished, he carefully and quietly set his plate in the kitchen sink, just as he was asked – having grown up with four sisters and a single mom that worked constantly, he knew better than to not pick up after himself. Though he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to cut his losses and let her go... And if that was the case, then what did it matter if he didn’t rinse his plate off?

  
He shook his head, ashamed at that defensive and teenager-ish line of thinking. Though he hadn’t seen his mother in close to four years, he could clearly picture the look of hurt and disgust she would give him if she somehow knew what he was thinking. It was the same look she’d given him when he’d broken up with his high school girlfriend over a prom corsage. His mom had made it a priority to teach her children to not give up on relationships at the first sign of things getting tough, and he supposed this applied. Though he and Angela weren’t really together or anything, he cared a lot for her, and all signs were pointing towards her caring about him too.

  
He gripped the edge of the sink for a moment to steel himself, just in case. Going into the bedroom to collect his things seemed suddenly dangerous. The last thing he wanted was to start a fight, especially considering how easy it used to be to set Angela off. Though she was a much calmer, more rational person now, he knew first hand that it was hard to get rid of old habits. But his clothes were still in the bedroom. Well, everything but his pants and shoes. Those hadn’t made it past the threshold of the hallway. He also noticed with a pang of guilty amusement that the wine he’d brought over sat untouched on the countertop.

  
The hallway was oppressively dark as he made his way down towards the faint light coming from under the half-cracked bedroom door. The walls breathed as he breathed…. God, why was he so nervous? He wasn’t about to face down a B.O.W., Angela was just a human woman. But in a way, he thought, that made her more dangerous – she knew him deeper than any zombie ever could, and could cut him far more severely if she felt like it. Slowly, he pushed the bedroom door open…only to find that she wasn’t there.

  
“What…?” he whispered to himself. Where could she possibly have gone? The light in the bathroom was off, so she wasn’t in there… Ah, there she was. He could just barely make out her shape on the balcony, sitting cross-legged on a deck chair. Tentatively, he made his way to the open screen door. The late September breeze was biting, but it felt good on his skin. She plainly felt the same – he could see from the doorway she was still only wearing his unbuttoned shirt. Feeling as though he was walking into a cage with a tiger, he sat down in the chair opposite, only to find that she was wiping tears from her cheeks. Shame slapped him straight in the face.

  
“Hey,” he said, not sure what else to do, “Um…what’s up?”

  
Long moments of silence passed. Leon cleared his throat awkwardly and opened his mouth to apologize (though for what, he wasn’t sure), but she beat him to the punch.

  
“Well…” She was still wiping tears away. “When you mentioned ‘us,’ it sort of…threw me for a loop, I guess. I was just thinking about what you’d told me about your family and growing up. So I started thinking about mine… I thought you might want to know about where I came from….”

  
Leon held his breath and the world held it with him. For whatever reason, he’d never thought about what she might have been like before training. It had never occurred to him that she had ever been anything other than the sarcastic, reactionary woman he had known then.

  
The world began again when she began speaking in a shaking voice. Leon listened intently, not speaking, drinking in every word.

  
She had been born, along with her twin brother Kevin, to an Irish Catholic family in a tiny town called Rutland, around fifty miles north of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. At least at that time, more cows lived there than people. Four more brothers followed. Even amongst her plethora of cousins, she was the only girl and she was often lonely. Her father never seemed to know quite what to do with her, and they mostly ignored each other, unless he was demanding that she keep better watch over her younger siblings as though she, not her mother, had given birth to them. In their close-knit Catholic community, it was expected that girls were to marry off and become housewives once they graduated high school, assuming they even made it that far without getting pregnant. Half of the girls in her graduating class had had baby bumps under their caps-and-gowns and cheap shotgun engagement rings on their fingers. Her dreams, however, were loftier.

  
Her mother, she recounted, had wanted to dance since she herself was a little girl. However, restrictions on what women could or couldn’t be in their community were even stricter in those days. But having a daughter had given her a chance at achieving that dream, and Angela had excelled at it. Her mother had spent at least half of what she earned from her job as a part-time teacher’s aide on dance lessons, costumes, and driving fifty miles each way to a studio in Sioux Falls five days a week, as well as competition entry fees. That had been a deep connection between her and mother, especially when she came away from a competition with a trophy. Her dreams had stretched as far as New York, and she’d been in training to audition for the NYC Ballet.

  
Until she’d gotten pregnant herself.

  
She’d been eighteen, and the fact was, in a tiny town that didn’t even have a movie theater, dating and sex were what you did to ease the boredom. But Rutland was a religiously-minded place in a conservative state: birth control was abhorred while sex education was essentially non-existent. The father of that baby had been ten years older than she, but had become little more than a ghost in her life when she’d told him the news. Her younger brothers had ridiculed her, called her unthinkable names. Her father beat her senseless, and had forbidden her mother from allowing her to dance anymore. Her own mother wouldn’t speak to her.

  
It had been her twin, Kevin, that had saved her. He’d taken the money he’d been saving for a car, borrowed his friend’s truck, and had spirited her away to Sioux Falls one afternoon for an abortion. He’d even lied to their parents, saying they were going hunting like they’d done when they were little. She’d come home in excruciating pain with blood running down her legs, pretending to have had a sudden miscarriage. She was certain her mother had seen through the ruse, but thankfully, she’d said nothing. Her father had immediately dragged her to church, still crying in her blood-soaked fatigues, and had forced her into confession. But fortunately, that had been that.  
She could hardly stand to live in that house after her only passion had been snatched away from her. She’d begged and pleaded with her mother to let her go back to lessons, but her mom only shrugged – after all, even though she’d been spending her own money, Andrew Ivers was head of the household and was not to be disobeyed or disrespected.

  
Two weeks later, only a month after the abortion, she’d run away to join the Marine Corps. They had been a real family to her, and it had been really nice to be able to make friends with other women. She’d been trained as a communications expert, but was given close combat and ranged training “just in case.” She was with them for four years before her team encountered a group of what were later called Hunters – a B.O.W. prototype, giant mutated frog-like creatures with foot-long claws. He nodded understandingly at this; he’d encountered Hunters himself on a few occasions. Everyone in her unit was interviewed by emotionless people in black suits and sunglasses about the experience; only she and one other were accepted by the US-StratCom. There, she was good at what she did. Extremely good. It was the first time in her life she’d really been told she’d been good at something; even dance instructors were loath to give praise until one’s efforts were rewarded with a trophy.

  
That was where they’d met. She hadn’t thought much of him first in all honesty, she said, but grew to like him while she’d trained him. He certainly wasn’t like the other new recruits that had joined StratCom – most were either full of themselves or angry and bitter. He’d intrigued her (this made him smile, in spite of himself). It had even crossed her mind once or twice that he was attractive. But then she’d graduated and gotten a job and put training out of her mind. She’d gotten on well with her new team; she was treated with a great deal of respect, especially considering how rare it was for a woman to be in SpecOps. Her team, however, was poorly prepared for what faced them on her second mission out with them.

  
Only three of the ten members survived. The rest were either killed by the monsters they’d encountered (she said this with a shudder) or by the explosion caused by a frag grenade going off in the middle of a gas leak. While she had been trapped under a vehicle, thus fracturing her hip and legs, it had been enough protection from the blast to keep her alive.

  
One of the other two survivors was in a government care facility for the mentally ill – he’d snapped and had never returned to reality. The other was in a similar job position as she somewhere in Texas, but they didn’t speak. She herself had been in the hospital for months: two months in a medically induced coma, another two weeks blind and half deaf, yet another three months recovering from multiple surgeries on her spine, hips, ankles…. Her parents came to visit her while she was still recovering. Her father demanded to know when she was going to come back home to settle down, and she’d shattered. It was the first time she had ever yelled at her father, the first time she’d ever sworn at him, her fury so great that nurses had to ban her parents from her room and administer heavy doses of tranquilizers. That had also been the last time she had seen him.

  
After that encounter in the hospital, she had essentially exiled herself from her family. She’d sought out heroin to cover up traumatizing memories and a burning bitterness, but the habit didn’t last long, once StratCom tracked her down and hired her back on for intelligence work. After that, she simply had no time to keep up with them, or at least that’s what she told them. She hadn’t spoken to her younger brothers in years, nor her father. She spoke to her mother on birthdays and at Christmas, but the last time they’d had been in the same room had been at Kevin’s wedding fourteen years ago. Kevin was the only family member she spoke to regularly; he lived in the Baltimore area with his family and was the only one that seemed to understand why she didn’t speak to their parents or siblings anymore, though he kept in contact himself.

  
More importantly than that, Kevin had a daughter, who, like Angela, was the only girl amongst a sea of boys. There was nothing in her life that was more important than Katie. Nothing meant more to her than making sure her niece knew that she was important, that she mattered, that what she wanted to do and what she thought meant something. Angela’s voice choked up again as she told him that that was why she watched those silly MTV shows: she had spent her childhood belittled for being a girl, and would rather die than see her niece feel the same way, even if it meant watching 16 and Pregnant all the time.

  
She swiped her finger over the screen of a phone she had procured from under her folded arms: the home screen was a picture of Angela and a young girl, probably about thirteen, smiling at the camera. The girl’s hair was brown instead of red, but aside from this, she might have been a young Angie.

  
“We text constantly,” Angela added in a weak voice. “I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything.”

  
Leon reached over to take her hand, persisting even when she flinched. “She’s beautiful,” he told her, his voice soft and soothing, “You know, she looks just like you.”  
That elicited a weak smile from her, and he was silently delighted. That delight, however, was quickly taken over by an alarming desire to ask her the question that had been burning on his tongue for the past month. He hardly had the time to stop himself and it just spilled out of him.

  
“Hey…” he choked out. An awkward little laugh followed. But he was there… Might as well continue. She was staring at him now, looking almost as alarmed as he felt. There was no going back now.

  
“I know this is kind of weird,” he blurted out, reaching up to scratch at the back of his head in that nervous habit he had. “I get it if you say no. But…um…well…”

  
“Leon, just spit it out.”

  
He looked up at her, an almost apologetic look in his eyes, only to find that she was smiling weakly at him, though her cheeks were still raw from tears. He couldn’t help but smile back, though he averted his eyes. He was sure he was blushing like a little kid. Suddenly, he was thankful it was dark.

  
“Angela….”

  
“Yes…?” Her voice was breathy in the night air.

  
“I would be honored…” Oh, damnit… He kicked himself for that. He would be honored? Was he seventy-five years old now? Oh well, it was out. “I would be honored if you would… If you would be my girlfriend.”

  
The last half of the sentence came tumbling out of his mouth like spilled water over a tabletop. For a brief moment, he wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole, until he found her lips pressed gently against his. He could feel her smiling. Dazed, he leaned back in his chair to see that she’d gotten up out of her own seat and was standing above him, looking sheepish and yet so utterly pleased with herself.

  
“So…uh…I guess that’s a yes?” he stuttered. The eye roll she gave him in response was so very her.

 

“Of course it is,” she said through a shy giggle. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  
“Well, why didn’t you ask?”

  
“Hey, I was cool with where we were, sir, I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable!”

  
“Whatever, Ivers. Come here.”

  
With that, he took her hand and pulled her into his lap, and she didn’t resist. They spent quite a long time like that out on the balcony, just kissing, enjoying each other’s warm company. When it got too cold, they ran inside and dove under the comforter and held each other for hours. By the time they finally fell asleep, the sun was peeking over the horizon.


	2. Love Grows

            Leon woke again just as the digital clock on Angela’s bedside table struck noon. She was still asleep beside him, as peaceful as he’d ever seen her. Busy, busy bee… Hands in as many projects as she had fingers… A huge yawn cracked his mouth open. He was still half-dazed – he hadn’t stayed up that late nor slept in so long since high school, and his half-formed thoughts certainly reflected that. He stretched ever-so carefully, wanting to watch her sleep. She slept curled in on herself in an almost child-like way, her head not even on the pillow but propped up on her arm instead. He could hear her breathing quietly and felt his heart swell despite himself as memories of the night prior rushed back over him. His eyes closed again, he smiled and relaxed back into his pillow. His plans until she woke up were to replay last night over and over in his head. He was overwhelmed by joy.

            Moments later, his thoughts were disturbed when Angela stirred beside him. She unfolded herself and stretched, a quiet groan escaping her lips.

            “Oh my God, what time is it?” he heard her croak. He chuckled and curled around her back.

            “It’s past noon, you lazy beast.” He pressed his lips into her shoulder.   
            “Oh, fuck off,” she muttered, screwing up her eyes against the sunlight streaming through the curtains. Clearly, she wasn’t used to staying up so late either. He snorted a laugh, feeling a strange, wild pleasure purr in his belly. Though it took nearly another half hour to coax her out of bed, Leon did manage to get her into the kitchen to make them both some pancakes. The creature purring away inside grew even larger when she praised him for how good they tasted considering he’d crafted them out of whatever crap was in her fridge. It was amazing to him how comfortable it all felt – the silences, the laughter, the touching. The rest of the day continued much the same as the night prior, though the lovemaking process was considerably lazier.

            He slept over that night. It wasn’t often he did that. He had been firm in his belief that leaving for work at the same time would be awkward, and would raise eyebrows if they arrived at the office together. But seeing her flash a tired smile at him while she pinned up her hair in the morning made it so it didn’t matter so much what other people thought. She seemed to be floating on a cloud herself, all knowing shy smiles, and he trailed, ecstatic, in her wake as they walked through the front doors of their office building. They didn’t see each other much that day. Leon found himself scanning meeting rooms and hallways for her without even thinking about it, his heart pounding out a drumline’s processional when they did cross paths once and she deliberately brushed her hand against his.

            They continued like this for the rest of the week. By Friday, he’d gotten bold (or desperate) enough to bring her a mug of coffee to her desk, a place he’d only passed by before on the way to somewhere else. He could feel Hunnigan’s eyes on his back from across the room as he lingered at the desk corner, but he knew Angela was positioned within the room in such a way that no one else could see the intimate smiles they were sharing. He had a vague enough excuse to be visiting with her anyway should anyone ask: just checking up on details on that one case in Yellowknife, he would say. They were both busy, however, and he couldn’t stay long. But the warmth in her gaze lingered in his mind until he met her in the parking garage to go home.

            Things moved really fast from thereon out. He moved into Angela’s condo three weeks later. Angela seemed to have a great time helping him move his stuff and unpack it, making space for him and his things, and listening with warm interest when he told her the stories behind the few family heirlooms in his possession. She especially loved the delicate china dining set with the lacy edges that had belonged to his grandmother, and went so far as to buy a whole new cabinet to display them in. He teased her gently about how she’d turned into an old lady, displaying china plates in her living room, but he was quietly pleased.

            They made no big announcement of it. Nobody wanted to incur any wrath from their superiors. The few people that did know (Hunnigan had figured it out in about two days, much to Leon’s chagrin) were supportive. So they floated together on a cloud of cohabitating bliss. They had a few arguments here and there, but it never involved any yelling, and could be chalked up to neither of them being very used to sharing their space with someone else. But it was just so nice to be together, to come home to each other at night, it was easy to get over the bickering.

            The next week was Thanksgiving, and as always, his mother insisted that he return to Virginia. He’d usually had some excuse why he couldn’t come (work was a popular one), but for the first time in about four or five years, he agreed to. The shriek of delight his mom gave out when he’d asked if he could bring a date was not at all surprising, though he had to whip the phone away from his ear. Polish Catholic Lidia Kennedy had been begging all her children to give her grandkids basically since they’d all moved out of the house.  Three of his four sisters had done so, but that just meant that his mom shifted her focus onto him whenever he spoke to her. Angela’s smile froze when he told her his mom had said that she could come.

            “Nervous?” he asked her with an understanding and pitying smile. She nodded and he patted her shoulder. He understood completely. His family could be…well, intense was a nice way of putting it. He just hoped his mom hadn’t strong-armed his dad into coming this year. Scott Kennedy was nobody’s favorite – after all, he had basically left their mom to raise five children under the age of ten on her own, including one with special needs – but it was so important to their mom that their family all be together, they all just grinned and bore it. But it was also important to him that Angela have a good time; he wanted her to like his family. His dad would make sure she wouldn’t.

            It had taken several phone calls and meetings over the course of two days, and putting her foot down many times, for Angela to get the week of Thanksgiving off work – he heard her say many times “I’ve worked every holiday for the past six years!” Finally, her own higher-ups caved and let her have it. They departed the next day around noon. The three hours it took to drive from D.C. to Benns Church, Virginia was spent in tense silence. Leon knew she didn’t like driving in his Mustang (the revving of the engine made her nervous) but her car was in the shop and they hadn’t had much of a choice. But she was usually very chatty when she was nervous. Now, she was giving him one-word answers.

            He finally asked her what was wrong when he exited the freeway. She took a long time to answer.

            “I’ve never met a boyfriend’s family before,” she finally replied in a small voice. He grinned at her and took her hand.

            “Hey, as long as you know who they are, they’ll like you. Wanna give me the run-down?”

            Angela sighed, almost like she was steeling herself, but she rattled off his family’s names: “Your mom is Lidia, your dad is Scott – is he coming?”

            Leon shrugged, a pit of dread cracking open in his stomach. He really hoped not, and didn’t want to think about it much. He was grateful that Angela didn’t press, and continued on with the list of names.

            “Mary is the oldest. She married Dave and her kids are James, Ryan, and Dylan. Anna is next, she married Jason, and her kids are Sarah and Camilla. Marla came after you, she married Danny, and they had Ella and Eva. Your youngest sister is Dana and she still lives with your mom.”

            “Good job, kid,” Leon teased, punching her playfully in the shoulder. She smiled back at him, but it went quiet again as he pulled onto the country roads that would lead them to his mom’s farmhouse. It was a good silence this time though.

            Another twenty scenic minutes later, and they finally pulled into the half-mile long driveway leading up to the farm. He was starting to get a little nervous himself. It had been four years since he’d seen his mom, even longer for a few of his sisters, and even longer than that for his dad. His sisters were all pretty grounded, reasonable people, at least in most circumstances, but it was pretty much the same story every time he saw his mom: she would complain constantly about how she never got to see him anymore, and why hadn’t he settled down and had kids yet. Now that Angela was coming, though, he was worried his mom would hound them both about when they were going to pop out a few babies. His mom made it very clear she did not believe in remaining childless.

            Family time usually involved a lot of bickering, too. If his dad was there, he was usually passed out drunk. But his mom was usually cracking the whip. Everyone contributed to the full week of meals, though Leon was usually left with his youngest sister Dana to babysit the kids, while Marla, Mary, and Anna fought with each other, their spouses, and their mom in the kitchen. He had a feeling his mom would try and test out Angela’s cooking skills to see if she was good enough for him, a fact that Angela was aware of, but he hoped wouldn’t come true.

            “It’s so beautiful out here,” Angela breathed. Leon had to agree. As little as he liked having to drive to middle-of-nowhere Virginia, the first dust of snow had fallen and coated everything in a beautiful white powder. His mom’s old mares and cows were grazing on the sparse dry grass in the fields in front of the house. All in all, it was pastorally picturesque.

             He had just barely put the car in park when he saw a blur come zooming out of the brick red front door. This blur collided with him, throwing its arms around him, and sobbing, “Thank God you’re here, Leon! The insanity’s started already!” The blur was his second oldest sister, Anna, followed closely by Marla, the second youngest. As Leon laughed and hugged his siblings, he mused to himself how very much the two of them resembled their father, a seemingly unfortunate trait, but both of them managed to pull it off. It was then he noticed that Angela was standing awkwardly by the passenger side of the car, biting her lip in that cute little way she had when she was nervous.

“Um,” Leon said, letting go of his sisters so that they actually realized he was trying to say something important. He gestured to Angela and added in a wink once his sisters’ backs were turned to him in the hopes of giving Angela a little confidence. “This is Angela Ivers, my girlfriend.”

He watched carefully as Marla and Anna exchanged looks that he could have described as predatory. But instead of leaping on Angela or picking her apart, like Leon had expected them to do, they both introduced themselves like normal humans. The tension in Angela’s face seemed to break as she shook his sisters’ hands and Leon felt himself relax with her. Marla then turned around and grabbed Leon’s hand and followed Anna back into the house, saying, “Mom will be mad if we don’t haul your ass into the kitchen right now and we don’t need any more drama.” Angela followed at a slight distance, a hesitant smile on her face as Leon looked back at her and shook his head in apology.

“Dad’s not here, is he?” he asked Marla quietly as they reached the porch. Marla just rolled her eyes.

“Not yet, anyway. Nobody knows if he’s actually going to come or if he’s going to be spending time with his new girl’s family. And when I say girl, I mean  _girl.”_

Marla’s answer was a sneer and Leon could see why. His dad had always had a…problem with younger women. He just hoped that, if Scott was going to show, he didn’t decide he wanted to stir up trouble by bringing along his new girlfriend.

Anna opened the front door and they were met with a wave of sound. The whole house was abuzz with activity. Leon just barely managed to not step on Mary’s husband, Dave, who was bent over on his hands and knees scrubbing something off the floor, before he nearly tripped over two of his three nephews, who were playing close to their dad. Mary was attempting to corral the rest of the children in the living room.

“Marl, are you  _trying_  to kill me?” he shouted over the noise, glancing back at Angela to see that she too was having some difficulty sidestepping the vacuums, buckets, toys, and people. He wasn’t surprised that his sister ignored him. Their mother was yelling for Marla and Anna and could be heard as soon as they were a few feet away from the kitchen door. The kitchen was warm and smelled like good, familiar food.

            “Jesus Christ, mom, calm down!” Anna cried as she led the small procession in. Marla let go of Leon’s hand at that point and he was able to collect Angela and steer her so that she was next to him.

“Brace yourself,” he murmured to her. The look she gave him, a mix between apprehension and annoyance, was almost laughable. Almost.

            “Calm down, Anna?” Lidia Kennedy shouted, slapping down pots and pans on the counter and stove, sidestepping Dana, who was humming softly to herself as she stirred something on the counter. “I have a week’s worth of food to be making, your father is mysteriously missing like always, your brother isn’t even here yet, and you’re telling me to calm down?!”

            “Turn around, mom,” Marla said as she rolled her eyes and grabbed a spoon to start dishing out chłodnik litewski, a Polish soup of yogurt, beetroot, and egg, into bowls.

            “Turn around?! Marla, I swear to God, you are asking for it….”

            “Hey, Mom?” Leon called in the hopes of getting his mother to notice him and get her off his sisters’ backs. Angela cleared her throat nervously. She was biting her lip again.

            “What?!” Lidia whirled around, ladle in hand as if she was about to use it as a weapon, but she threw it into the sink and clapped her hands over her mouth when she saw her son in the doorway, waving hesitantly at her. Even at that distance, Leon could see the tears forming in his mother’s eyes. He let out a loud “oof!” when Lidia threw herself at him and hugged him to her tightly. The top of his mom’s head barely reached his chest, but it didn’t matter – she was able to pull him down to her.

            “My boy!” Lidia sobbed into her son’s shoulder. Leon rolled his eyes; she did this literally every time she saw him. “Oh, Leon, I missed you so much! I never get to see you anymore!” She let go of him to take his hands. “Did any grandchildren come with you this time?”

He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

            Leon cleared his throat, prying his hands out of his mother’s grip, and gathered Angela close to him. She felt tense beneath his touch.

“Uh…Mom, this is my girlfriend, Angela.”

            Lidia gasped, her hands flying up to her mouth again. Her blue eyes grew wider than saucers as she gave Angela a thorough look-over. Leon flinched for Angela’s sake when Lidia launched herself at his girlfriend, but couldn’t help but grin a little when he saw the look on her face: that typical frozen smile, accompanied by a very awkward little laugh, newcomers to the farm had gracing their lips when Lidia threw herself all over them.

            “Somebody grab her a paper bag to breathe in before she passes out.”

            Leon turned his head to find that it was Marla, scowling over salads near the sink, that had spoken and he smirked; a more accurate statement had not been uttered all day. Lidia let go of Angela just long enough to exclaim that she was so excited to finally see her son settling down, and then immediately grabbed Angela’s hand and dragged her after, insisting she meet the rest of the family. All Leon could do was shrug apologetically and follow when Angela whipped her head around to look at her boyfriend and mouthed, “Help me!”

            “Leon!”

Leon stopped in his tracks when he heard his name. It was Dana. She had looked up from whatever she was stirring and had bounced after him, grabbing his hand and smiling sweetly up at him. She hadn’t changed much in the four years since he’d seen her last, still all smiles all the time. She still lived at home with Lidia, helping out on the farm, since she wasn’t able to live on her own independently. He always felt a tinge of bitterness whenever he saw his youngest sister; not towards her, but towards their father, who had left their mother after she’d been born with Down’s. But he had such affection for her. She always knew how to make anyone smile.

            “Do you want to meet Angela?” he whispered to her. She nodded excitedly and he led her into the living room, hoping his mother hadn’t absconded with Angela and taken her hostage.

            The dining and living rooms were still upwards of deafening with all the chatter, screaming kids, and the noise of the vacuums, but all it took for Lidia to kill the racket was clearing her throat and clapping her hands twice. It took a few moments, but within a second or two, everyone was looking at their hostess. She brought Angela forward to stand next to her, but Angela grabbed Leon’s hand at the last second and dragged him with her, Dana pulled along beside him.

“Everyone,” Lidia said, grinning from ear to ear. “This is Angela, Leon’s girlfriend.” She wiggled her eyebrows at the word  _girlfriend,_  like it was some great secret, though it wasn’t, really.

Mary couldn’t do much except wave briefly from across the room, as she was still trying to keep the younger children from injuring each other, but the husbands and the older kids came forward to shake Angela’s hand and greet Leon after Lidia ducked back into the kitchen. Dana gave Angela a huge hug, something she clearly didn’t expect from her wide-eyed look but accepted gracefully. Angie’s smile was still shaky and nervous but she seemed somewhat more confident once all the greetings were over with. She chattered like a bird as they both went out to the car to retrieve their bags. Not for the first time, Leon noted that she was incredibly different in and out of the office. Work-Angie was composed and stand-offish, military-like. Nothing rattled her. Outside of work, not so much.

Angela had relaxed somewhat by the time they’d unpacked. They’d taken some time to explore the room Lidia had put them up in. It wasn’t the house he’d grown up in – he’d grown up in Chesapeake – but his mom had kept quite a few of his old things, including several years’ worth of trophies from the varied sports he’d been in, and had tried to style this room like his old bedroom. Just like before, Angela listened with rapt attention as he explained particular memories associated behind certain items – victories against the rival high school in rowing or track, pennants from colleges he’d been hoping to be accepted to….

He felt a sudden pang of sadness looking over all the memorabilia his mom insisted on keeping. His life hadn’t turned out the way he’d imagined it would when he was seventeen. But when he glanced over at Angela and saw the warm smile on her face, he figured it had been worth it.

            Leon’s mom and sisters were so busy preparing dinner that Lidia asked Leon if he’d help bringing in the animals for their own feeding. Angela jumped at the chance. When Leon raised an eyebrow at her, an indignant “What? I grew up around horses and I haven’t seen any in years,” was her response as she zipped up her jacket.

            “Okay, cowgirl,” Leon mocked, dodging out of her reach when she took a playful swat at him. She chased him out the front door, and they laughed their way down the path towards the fields. Leon could practically feel his mom’s eyes burning into his back from the kitchen window, but dismissed the thought when Angela stopped dead in her tracks. His mom’s big black mare was standing at the fence, still as stone, her ears pricked forward as she watched Angela intently. It was almost like a picture out of a fairy tale: mist rose from the horse’s nostrils in intervals, swirling around her head like smoke from a dragon’s mouth. She was a very large animal. Leon had always been a little intimidated by horses. They were huge and moody and likely to panic at the slightest anything. This one in particular seemed to love to chase him whenever she was given the opportunity. When his gaze turned back to Angela, however, she had dropped her gaze and turned sideways, clicking her tongue softly.

“Hey, mama, hey” he heard her murmur repeatedly as she stepped sideways towards the animal. The horse began tossing its head stiffly. The three other horses had gathered nearby and were watching attentively. Leon started feeling uneasy, but Angela kept approaching. When she was within arm’s length, she extended her flat palm for the mare to sniff. Leon tensed without thinking about it, ready to step between her and the animal, but to his great surprise, the mare, who had terrorized him in the past, placed her nose gently in Angela’s hand. A huge smile broke out over Angela’s face.

“Aw, grumpy old Uncle Leon was wrong about you,” she murmured to the mare while she stroked its neck, glancing back at him to stick her tongue out. He stuck his tongue out right back.

“If you’re nervous around them, they’ll be nervous around you,” Angela explained, “If you show them you aren’t afraid of them, they won’t be afraid of you either.”

            Leon scoffed. “Yeah, I’ll remember that next time she’s trying to run me down.”

            Angela ignored him, instead taking a handful of the mare’s mane to lead it to the gate, clicking her tongue to encourage the other animals to follow. Leon was shocked when they slowly began picking their way over to her. He followed at a distance and helped Angela place them each in their respective stalls. Lidia and Dana appeared just as Angela slid the last stall door closed. Lidia was beaming.


	3. Love Kindled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to QueenLightning, who read through my nonsense, left such wonderful comments on it, and inspired me to power through this writers block to continue on this part of a story about my favorite boy and his girl that I honestly haven't touched in about a year. Thanks so much, my dear. :) (This certainly doesn't end here, fyi! There's a lot more to this fic, it's just in fragments and I have no self-discipline and can't figure out how to link a lot of the pieces together lmao)

            The rest of the time leading up to Thanksgiving went well, relatively speaking. Angela gained more and more confidence as time went on and she was laughing and joking with everyone by the holiday as though they’d all known each other their entire lives. They’d decided early on that the answer to the inevitable “So how did you guys meet?” was to just say at work. As far as anyone in his family knew, Leon was still a cop. As far as anyone in his family was _going_ to know, so was she. She so expertly dodged questions and gave satisfactory generic answers, even Leon was impressed. She teased him over stories from his childhood and offered up stories from her own, though, Leon noted, they were carefully edited so as not to give too much away. All in all, everything was going swimmingly, and the dreamy smile on her face as they sat near the fireplace every evening told him she felt the same.

            It went so smoothly that everyone, including the husbands, sisters, and the kids, decided on a spontaneous game of touch football when Lidia went into town to buy more food. Leon and Angela’s team won on a touchdown that could only be described as heroic when Leon tossed Angela the ball, then proceeded to charge her, heave her over his shoulder, and sprint over the line into the makeshift end zone while she shrieked obscenities at him. It only worked because everyone else was too shocked at what he did to even attempt an interception.

            The hours leading up to dinner on Thanksgiving Day were tense, but only because Lidia was barking orders like an overseer in the kitchen, even at Angela, because, she said, it “makes you appreciate your food more if you make it yourself.” However, Angela was kicked out and appointed to babysit the children after several failed attempts at keeping peas from burning. When Leon managed to convince his mother that his bladder was about to explode and he was able to duck out of the kitchen for a few minutes, he glared at Angie and told her he knew she did that on purpose. She merely told him he couldn’t prove anything, grinning like a Cheshire cat before going back to playing with the younger girls in their dollhouse.

            Scott Kennedy did not make an appearance that year. Over pecan pie, Lidia expressed her disappointment at the empty chair. A tense silence fell over the table. No one had ever wanted to bring up their real feelings over the matter.

            “Mom, none of us ever really want him here.”

            The silence shattered and it had been Mary, usually the most likely of them to try to keep the peace, that had broken it. Lidia looked at her oldest child like she’d been slapped while everyone else looked on nervously. To everyone’s surprise, Lidia’s eyes began welling with tears.

            “But I thought you all _liked_ having your dad here!” she cried. “I thought you wanted to have Thanksgiving dinners like you did when you were little!”

            “Mom,” Anna replied slowly, “we never said anything because we thought it was important to _you._ He’s a huge…jerk.”

            Leon had to hold back a laugh when he noticed his older sister censor herself for the kids and it was made even harder when he saw that the older boys were snickering themselves. Anna had let loose much more colorful words in regards to their father in the past. One withering look from their aunt, however, and the kids stopped their giggling cold.

            “But…” Lidia looked crestfallen. “I just wanted you all to be happy!”

            “We wanted _you_ to be happy!” Anna and Mary replied in unison. A long and pregnant silence followed. Lidia was staring at her lap, appearing to be doing some deep soul searching. Leon glanced over at Angela on his left to see that her face was tense; stuck in the middle of family drama she wasn’t a part of, she felt as awkward about this as he did.

            Suddenly, Lidia reached out and drained her wine glass. Everyone around the table watched her anxiously.

            “All those years I’d been inviting that bastard,” she said thickly through a shaky smile, “and I could have just saved myself the aggravation. Somebody get me more wine.”

            The adults at the table (and the older kids at their grandma swearing) burst out laughing. Anna, Mary, and Marla got up from their chairs to hug their mom, tears of relief flowing freely. Angela got up to grab another wine bottle from the kitchen and new drinks were poured. The atmosphere relaxed quite a lot, and not just because of the alcohol. All the same, Leon avoided his mom’s eyes. He could feel her watching him and was worried about why. Guilt? Joy? He couldn’t decide and wasn’t sure he wanted to know right now.

            Later that night, after pie was eaten, dishes were washed, and kids were in bed, Lidia asked Angela in a timid voice if she could speak to her privately. Angela agreed, though not without throwing him an anxious glance as she left the kitchen to follow his mom out onto the screened-in porch on the back of the house.

            “Hope Angie makes it out alive,” whispered Marla as she helped Dana pack away leftover turkey. Leon snorted, but dread had settled in his stomach. Whatever it was his mom had to say, he just hoped it was good.

            It was nearly half an hour later, after Leon had gotten ready for bed out of not knowing what else to do, that Angela reappeared. He glanced up from his tablet, where he’d been reading the news, to see that her expression was reserved, to say the least, her arms crossed over her chest. She closed the door quietly behind her.

            “Hey,” he greeted her softly.

            “Hey,” was his stoic reply. Ok, that wasn’t good…

            “So…how’d it go? What did she want to say?”

            Angela didn’t say anything until she’d gotten into her pajamas and climbed under the covers next to him.

            “Well,” she started hesitantly as she settled in against her pillow, as though trying to find the words to say. “She started crying almost immediately.”

            Leon couldn’t help but laugh a little. That sounded exactly like his mom.

            “She asked me if I love you. I said I did.”

            Leon grinned at Angela, nudging her arm with his elbow, through he was really encouraging her to say more. His mom was honest and blunt and she didn’t just pull people aside to chat privately unless she had something of significance to say. Angela sighed heavily before she continued.

            “She talked about your childhood at first. She said your dad singled you out a lot because you were the only boy, that you’d wanted to go to college for biology but joined the police academy to impress him. She said your dad used to complain to her all the time about how he didn’t like how you were turning out, whatever that meant to him.”

            Leon felt his stomach clench. He’d heard his parents fighting about him as a kid, about how his dad thought he was turning out to be a nerd and a sissy instead of a real man while his mom argued that children should be allowed to follow whatever their passions were. He remembered thinking it was unfair that his dad felt this about him, as he never had claimed that his sisters were wusses for liking certain things. He hadn’t thought about that in years, shutting the memories away, and he wasn’t terribly fond of the reminder. If he hadn’t listened to his dad all those years ago, he never would have joined the police force and his life would’ve been much different. He let her go on without comment.

            “She said she knew you aren’t really a cop. You disappeared for a couple of years. Cops don’t just disappear, even if they move to another department. She’s seen you on TV before.”

            “What did you say to that?” Leon said quickly, feeling a moment of panic. For no reason, he knew. Angela worked Intel. There was no way she gave away anything, even to someone as good at wheedling out information as his mom was. Angela shrugged.

            “I didn’t say anything. Figured it was better to say nothing than try to deny it.”

            Leon nodded silently. Quite frankly, he was surprised nobody in his family had brought this up before.

            “Your mom kind of shook her head at that point. Said she realized it didn’t really matter what you were doing these days, or what I do, or how we met. That she knows she’ll never get the truth out of either of us. She can tell you’ve been affected by life circumstances, and that it kills her as your mom that she can’t make that better, but said she gets that there’s some things even a mother can’t help with. To my _great_ surprise, she said she noticed that same look in me.

            She ended it all by hugging me and saying that she can see how much we care about each other, that she only wants you to be happy, and that she hopes we get married someday. Then she patted my cheek and left.”

            Leon looked over at Angela, who was staring at the ceiling. He was stunned slightly. His mom, his hardass Polish mother, who had raised five kids single-handedly with enormous love and strict discipline, who had scrutinized his sisters’ spouses down to the brands of clothing they wore, had essentially given her blessing for his relationship. Maybe time and several grandchildren had softened her some, but he certainly hadn’t expected that approval after meeting Angela one time. All the same, he couldn’t have been happier.

            He set his tablet down on the nightstand and settled down under the blanket, pulling Angela close to him. Her arms were still cold from standing out on the porch for as long as she had so he rubbed them gently, delighting in the slight shiver he elicited from her.

            “Happy?” she grinned at him, planting a long kiss on his cheek.

            “Yeah, I think so,” was his cheeky reply. “You?”

            “Considering how nervous I was to meet your mom, I don’t think this could have turned out much better.”

            Leon couldn’t have agreed more. The kiss he gave her was tender and sweet as he began to contemplate what their future together might hold. Marriage was certainly not off the table, he thought.

            “Wait, did you brush your teeth?” he asked her abruptly, realizing she’d gotten into her pajamas without going through the rest of her bedtime ritual and found himself unable to resist the urge to tease her about it in his giddiness.

            “Yes, I did,” she replied with mock haughtiness, “just after pie. I came up so I wouldn’t eat the rest of the tin, thank you very much.”

            “I don’t believe you. Didn’t see it, don’t believe it. Gross.”

            “Bite me, Kennedy.”

            She was smiling against his lips as he continued to kiss her. They fell asleep shortly thereafter, and Leon felt peace, for the first time in a long time.


	4. Love Blossoms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooooooooo work and job hunting have been the whirlwind nightmare they have always been, so unfortunately this chapter is a bit short. But for once, I have a game plan for where this is going. :)

            Theirs was not a normal relationship. His and Angela’s. Most people didn’t have careers that routinely involved risking their lives. Most people didn’t have significant others with careers that involved saving them. Not like they did.

            Leon mused on this as he sat, exhausted, in the hull of a DSO helicopter, headphones clapped tightly over his ears to dull the noise of the chopper’s blades, his flak vest providing familiar pressure to his chest as he tried to rest. The mission he’d just been extracted from had been a success by all accounts: his whole team had made it out alive with minimal injury. Colton had gotten a slash to the face from a would-be suicide bomber they’d caught unawares with vials of the latest virus on the black market (what letter were they on now?). The terrified man had been subdued, and the rest of the warehouse had been secured. It had been a feat with only eight people on the ground, but he trusted those guys with his life and it had paid off.

            “Great job closing that case, Leon,” crackled Hunnigan’s voice in his earpiece. He smirked lazily. She’d done a hell of a job hacking the wiring of the building so his team could surprise the men inside. They certainly wouldn’t have gotten away as unscathed as they were without her. As usual.

            “Sitting pretty in D.C., Hunnigan?” he spoke into the tiny mic next to his mouth. “See to it you do some actual work next time!”

            “I’m going to choose to ignore that,” sneered Hunnigan from the other end. He heard a soft beep, which meant that she had cut off communication to all the earpieces except for his.

            “Angela’s very anxious about you,” she continued. “She was running back-up for the bomb squad and that near run-in with that bomber you found had her pretty rattled. She almost didn’t disable the wiring in time. I’d get in contact with her ASAP.”

            “Got it. Thanks, Hunnigan.”

            Leon sat back in his seat, legs outstretched and crossed, but now his mind was working overtime. They still had over an hour until they were going to be back on the ground, so with half his crew asleep and the rest playing cards in the back of the chopper, he had little to do except mull things over.

            Now that he thought about it, the guy, the kid really, that they’d run into had had a detonator in his hands, and had clicked the button quickly once before pulling a knife on Colton, who had reached out to subdue him. Apparently, it was due to Angela’s quick thinking and faster fingers at her keyboard that they’d made it out alive. He felt a ball of anxiety form in his stomach, but then, an even stronger wave of affection crashed over him.

It was rare that they worked together. Hunnigan saw to this, in order to minimize distractions while working. But they had been woefully short on Intel agents lately, as two were out after having babies and another three were sick with the flu. Despite any distractions or anxieties, Angela had come through and had saved his team.

It was March now, four months since Angela had met his family over Thanksgiving, and their relationship had progressed further since. Over New Years, he’d met her twin brother, Kevin, Kevin’s wife, Charlotte, and their three kids, Katie, Angela’s beloved niece, and twin sons, Owen and Charlie. It had been the most nervous he’d been since he could remember. On the few occasions in the past that he’d met a significant other’s family, he usually made at least one off-color joke that soured the family’s feelings for him. Knowing how much Angela’s family meant to her made it all the more nerve-wracking.

They’d gone out clubbing of all things, Kevin, Charlotte, Angela, and himself. How strange it had been, being over forty years old and in a club. Even stranger had been when Kevin had pulled him aside after Angela and Charlotte had made a beeline for the dance floor. Angela’s twin had essentially given him the same speech his mom had given her, right down to being asked if he loved Angela. It could not have possibly gone better. Kevin was not an emotional person and had clearly been uncomfortable confronting Leon about his sister, noting especially that Angela would not have been pleased knowing the conversation taking place, but he clearly cared about Angela enough to make sure she was happy. The Ivers stamp of approval had been placed on their relationship, and Leon had made love to Angela that night in their hotel with a special sort of passion.

He’d been looking at rings. They’d talked about marriage, the two of them. The same old concerns came up, the ones that had prevented them for quite some time from making their relationship official. But, they figured, if they could overcome that insecurity once, they could do it again. Any time he came home more than a few minutes after when she felt he should be expected from an errand or from work, she looked at him with suspicion, thinking he’d been out to buy a ring. It was all in good fun, really. But little did she know, he was having one made.

Hunnigan was helping him a lot, along with Charlotte, Angela’s sister-in-law. After a lot of stilted back-and-forth texting, he settled on a sapphire, as Angela’s favorite color was blue, in a round cut with tiny diamonds around the outside. Next had come the nerve-wracking task of finding out her ring size. She didn’t really wear much jewelry day-to-day. He’d had to pilfer her grandmother’s ring that she kept locked up in a keepsake box without her noticing, and it was only after he’d gotten to the jewelry shop that he realized he’d never seen her wear it and didn’t even know if it fit her. The shop owner reassured him that regardless of the size of the ring he proposed with, they could always come in to get it re-sized, which made him feel a little less worried. He just wanted it all to be perfect.

He was still waffling on how he wanted to execute his plans when they finally touched down outside D.C. Almost as soon as the helicopter’s wheels touched down on the tarmac, however, his thoughts had to be directed elsewhere. Paperwork and reports had to be filed and each of his team members had to go through a post-field physical. Though he and his team had landed at around three p.m., he didn’t leave the office until past midnight. He texted Angela as soon as he climbed into his car, but didn’t expect she’d be awake at this hour. He knew she’d had a bunch of work to do at the office herself, so without a doubt, he knew she’d be as tired as he felt.

To his surprise, she was awake when he got home. Dozing on the couch in her pajamas, but not dead asleep in bed. He tried to close the door quietly but she was yawning and stretching when he entered the living room.

“Hey,” he murmured as he moved to set his bag down by the bedroom door. She didn’t respond at first, just stared at him with bleary eyes. He started to move towards her, but she beat him to the punch and was off the couch and in his arms before he could take two steps. One of his hands moved automatically to the back of her head when he heard her sniffle. She was not a crier – that mission had shaken her.

Gently, he led her back to the couch. They held each other for a few minutes, Angela breathing deeply to stem her tears, Leon shushing her softly. Eventually, she pulled away to wipe at her eyes, mumbling an apology.

“Sorry for what?” he replied, nudging her playfully. “For saving my ass?”

“I almost didn’t,” she said thickly. “Some higher up for that group really thought things through. That cell had the most complex anti-hacking system surrounding their electrical network that I’ve seen in a long time. That kid surprised us all and it took me almost too long to realize he was holding a detonator. I had to flood the fuses to trick the bomb behind him into not blowing.”

“But you weren’t too late,” he said soothingly, a hand now rubbing her back. “I’m still here. The whole team is still alive. Colton got it in the face, but he’ll be fine.”

“That little shit,” Angela muttered, still sniffling. “Can’t tell you how many times he’s been told to wait before he puts his hands in things.”

Leon laughed, relieved to know she felt a little better now that he was home. All he wanted at this point, however, was a shower and he parted from her with a lingering kiss. The hot water felt amazing on his aching muscles and sore back. He took a longer time than usual shaving and combing out his hair, just enjoying those few things he did to pamper himself. By the time he was finished in the now steam-clogged bathroom, Angela had pulled his bag to the closet door and was curled up in bed, half-asleep. He smiled down at her. Any thoughts or plans he might have wanted to share with her would have to wait until morning. Within moments after he’d slid under the sheets next to Angela, he was asleep, his heart swollen with love.


	5. Update

Hi all! I've been super busy this past month or so with job-hunting and now things are coming to a head and I'm going for an interview!!! This has meant, however, that I haven't had the energy or motivation to write. I got a chunk of the next part I want done, but it's going to be a long one, so this might take me a bit. Hang in there, and thank you for sticking with it!

Once I have the part ready to go, I will edit this chapter and copypasta it in here. 

Thanks guys~


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